Book 1 - Bleak Seasons by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

on inside me
that is beyond my control or understanding. Sometimes I feel like
there are several of me in there, all mixed up, sometimes sitting
behind the real me watching, watching. There may be no chance for
me to recover complete sanity and stability.
    Goblin came strutting back. He and One-Eye accompanied a man who
was not much more than skin and bones. Few Deceivers are in good
shape these days. They have no friends anywhere. They are hunted
like vermin. Huge bounties ride on their shoulders.
    Goblin flashed his toadlike grin. “We’ve got us a
red-hand man here, Murgen. A genuine black rumel guy with the red
palm. What do you think of that?”
    The thought lightened my heart. The prisoner was truly a top
Strangler. The red hand meant that he had been there when Narayan
Singh tricked Lady into thinking she was being inducted into the
Strangler cult when in fact the Deceivers were really consecrating
her unborn child as daughter of their goddess Kina.
    But Lady had employed a trick of her own, marking every
Strangler there with the red hand that could not be denied later.
Nothing they tried would take the color away, short of amputation.
And a one-handed Strangler could not manage the rumel, the
strangling scarf, that was the tool of the Deceivers’ holy
trade.
    “The Old Man will be pleased.” A red-hand man would
know what was going on inside his cult.
    I crowded closer to the fire. Thai Dei, done helping dispose of
redundant shadowweavers, eased in beside me. How much had Dejagore
changed him? I could not imagine him ever being anything but dour,
taciturn, remorseless and pitiless, even as a toddler.
    Goblin, I noted, was doing that thing he did lately where he
watched me from the corner of his eye while pretending to do
something else. What were he and One-Eye looking for?
    The runt held his hands out. “Fire feels good.”
     
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15
    Paranoia has become our way of life. We have become the new
Nyueng Bao. We trust no one. We let no one outside the Black
Company know what we are doing until we are sure what the response
will be. In particular we prefer keeping the Prahbrindrah Drah and
his sister, the Radisha Drah, our employers, way back there in the
deep dark shadows.
    They are not to be trusted at all, ever, except to serve their
own closest interests.
    I smuggled my prisoners into the city and hid them in a
warehouse near the river, a Company friendly Shadar fish place
possessed of a very distinctive air. My men scattered to their
families or someplace where they could drink beer. I was satisfied.
With one quick, nasty stab we had decimated the surviving Deceiver
leadership. We almost got that fiend Narayan Singh. I got within
spitting distance of Croaker’s baby. In all honesty I could
report that she seemed all right.
    Thai Dei knocked the prisoners to their knees, wrinkled his
nose.
    “You’re right,” I agreed. “But this
place don’t stink half as bad as your swamp does.”
Taglios claims the river delta but the Nyueng Bao disagree.
    Thai Dei grunted. He could take a joke as well as the next
guy.
    He does not look like much. He is a foot shorter than I am. I
outweigh him by eighty pounds. And I am far prettier. He has
crudely cropped black hair that sticks out in unkempt spikes.
Skinny, lantern-jawed, taciturn and surly, Thai Dei is entirely
unappetizing. But he does his job.
    A Shadar fishmonger brought the Captain to us. Croaker was
getting old. We were going to have to call him Boss or Chief or
something. You cannot call the Captain the Old Man once he’s
really old, can you?
    He was dressed like a Shadar cavalryman, all turban, beard and
plain grey clothing. He eyed Thai Dei coolly. He did not have a
Nyueng Bao bodyguard himself. He loathed the idea despite his
having to disguise himself whenever he wanted to walk the streets
alone. Bodyguards are not traditional. Croaker is stubborn about
Company traditions.
    Hell, the Shadowmaster’s officers all employ bodyguards.
Some have